


MSIV - Scully

by you_and_me_mulder



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Other, Post-Episode: s11e10 My Struggle IV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-30
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-05-16 06:21:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14805992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/you_and_me_mulder/pseuds/you_and_me_mulder





	MSIV - Scully

Stunned, Scully looks over the edge of the dock as she tries to catch her breath. _William must have jumped. Oh God, the water has to be freezing._

"He's gone. He's gone, Scully.”

She looks at Mulder and her heart drops. _Mulder didn't jump in the water after him...._

"He shot him." Scully glances hesitantly back at the water and finds the tide flowing to her right. She cannot will herself to look right.

"He shot me."

 _Mulder isn’t shot? William must have.....oh God._ She searches the dark water as she processes what Mulder is telling her.

_He was too late to save him, it was Mulder who was supposed to die, but William....._

She doesn’t feel anything but a cold, pinpricking numbness. She still can’t catch her breath, and there’s a loud ringing in her ears like a freight train. Her head is cloudy. She struggles to focus on anything, on what she has lost in the water. Somewhere in the back of her logical mind she knows she's in shock, but her only link to sanity is walking away and she turns to watch him.

She’s in danger of losing herself, and Mulder. His face only alarms her more - he’s at risk of falling into an abyss from which there’s no return. She’s suddenly desperate to assuage his guilt, hyper-focused on easing his pain, even if only to get them both through this moment.

"Mulder...he wanted us to let him go.” Her tongue is heavy and dry in her mouth, the words echoing disconnectedly in her ringing ears. There’s no conviction to them. “He wasn't meant to be.”

“William was our son,” Mulder fires back, nearly stabbing through her numbness.

“No.” _Yes_ , her subconscious screams, even as she shakes her head.

“Scully, he was our son!” His words pierce at her again, but his readiness to fight helps her regain her intent.

A wave of nausea sweeps over her. _I can’t lose him too_

“No,” she tries again, stepping towards him, her eyes begging him to hear her. “William was an experiment.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He was an idea, born in a laboratory,” she stammers.

"But you were his mother."

“No...” She takes a steadying breath, willing the nausea threatening to overtake her to level off. _Mother._

"I carried him. I bore him....but I was never a mother to him."

Not this William—Jackson. She wasn't there with him for the flashes of his childhood that hurt, the confusion and loneliness. Jackson wasn't the bald baby she mothered and adored. She fights back the screaming in her head that she could have been, she would have been, a mother to him now, protected him if given the chance. No, it wasn't meant to be.

"I wasn't." She repeats, as much to convince herself as Mulder.

He was never theirs. They were used, their child was genetically altered into a human super soldier, one who knew what he was and didn’t want to live that life. Deep down, Mulder knows this...they both do. But neither of them have said it aloud.

“William...William wasn't....” she falters, searching his face. _Meant to be_ , she repeats to herself. _Ours._

The agony on Mulder’s face stops her. The spring he’s had in his step over the past few months, the smile he wore, the optimism pouring from him...she knows they were tied to his hope of being reunited with his son. These were topics they never dared to discuss, but there were changes in him since he learned Jackson was out there, an unbridled hope.

That hope is now lost, devastating him. “For so long I believed...what am I now if I'm not a father?”

She searches his face, weighing his words. This is not how she planned on telling him. Truth be told, she doesn’t have a plan, but this isn’t in any of the scenarios she considered.

16 weeks, many of those spent in utter denial. Menopause taking hold, eating out on cases, stress, exhaustion from being back in the Bureau physically chasing monsters. Never, not once, until a week ago when her gynecologist tittered on about doctors being the worst patients, did it ever register. She is pregnant, and afraid. Uncertain if Mulder wants another child, unsure of how she feels - her age, the impossibility of becoming pregnant to begin with, the high stake risks, the new rededication to their relationship.

What she realizes now, standing here, is this baby is not a replacement for what they lost in William. And, amidst all her fears, Mulder’s admission is a small spark of hope that maybe it will be enough to keep them both holding on at this moment. “You are a father."

"What are you talking about?" Shaking, she takes his hand and places it on her abdomen, watching his face as his fingers spread over the swell she’s been concealing under sweaters for the better part of a week, as the realization hits him.

The contact paired with his concern and shock are enough to break through her numbness. She is hit full force by the weight of the evening and her composure crumbles.

“That’s impossible.” Trembling uncontrollably, she nods, nearly unable to speak. “I know. I know it is...”

“It’s more than impossible.”

He doesn’t move his hand until her face falls and her body becomes wracked with quiet sobs. He pulls her to him, tucking her tightly under his chin. She feels his resolve and strength return, coursing through him, and knows he’s out of danger for now. Swaying gently, he holds her in the night until the tears and shaking abate.


End file.
